Corpses, carcasses, stiffs or dead bodies… code 419 for Dead Body.

They’re all the same thing; sometimes smelly sometimes not so, as with a more recently deceased human being, which is a sad thing when you think about it. But it’s a fact of life, and by statute, all dead bodies are investigated by law enforcement. That would have been me between 1974 & 2003. Before this, I’d never seen a dead body. By request from a loyal reader (EM) I’ve dug into my memory bank (actually, some of this may be already in written format) and came up with a few that are etched in my mind of the many dead-body calls I went on as a cop. I lost track of them. My first was an older man in a small travel trailer in a run down, old mobile home park on Boulder Highway. More dirt and wild Bermuda grass than lawns. Dirty, bent up garbage cans and junk cars lined the old paved street. I was a rookie cop, not even any academy experience yet. My training office told me to go inside, see what I could determine without touching anything then report back outside to him. He sat in the air-conditioned patrol car. The odor was apparent from outside the trailer, the flies on the inside of the screen door should have given me a clue how bad he was. The park manager hadn’t seen the guy in a few days. It was August. Got a visual yet? Let me help. I took a deep breath in anticipation of a short stay once I got inside. The guy was in his boxers and tee shirt, on his side, overweight and looked to me like he dropped straight to the floor, wedging himself in the small space between the wooden paneled walls of a mini hallway, a very uncomfortable position. I didn’t see any knives sticking out of him or bullet holes in him and quickly backed out, let out the old air and took in fresh. I told my T/O what saw. He told me to go back inside and get a better look. Look for lividity, make sure it’s on the bottom part of his body. Lividity? New to me… so I went back in, cupped my hand over my mouth and nose (which didn’t really fool my nose) and stepped over the body to see his back side. I reached down and barely moved his tee shirt, and yup, his skin was dark purple all along the lower part of his side nearest the floor. He hadn’t been moved since dying, the blood settling along his side by gravity, better known as lividity. Flies walked all over him as if in search of something important. He died where he fell. I was just short of gagging and went back out to report what I’d seen. We awaited the mortuary and coroner. The mortuary guys (think of Lurch) had to really struggle to straighten him out do to rigor mortis and his weight to get him on the gurney and strapped on. I realized that was a job I could never do. The coroner guessed heart attack, but I never knew for sure. We determined he died of natural causes and cleared ready for the next call. Simple as that. I had a brief lesson from my T/O on 419’s. I lost some of my rookie-ness.
There many other dead bodies all in various degrees of decomposition, smell and condition, both male and female. Some suicides with brain matter and blood splatters, a few carbon monoxide poisoning sitting in their car, some homicide victims – gun shot was most prevalent and a few accidental deaths to include, one industrial accident where the victim was run over by the front end loader he had been operating at the gravel pit alone, after hours, so we could only speculate what caused him to be in front of it when it bent him in half like a Raggedy Ann doll and disfiguring his skull shape. One of the worst; a 5 yr old girl hit by a car who appeared to be just sleeping in the street, a most unusual place, surreal in every aspect. I remember thinking of my little girls at home.
After a few years the shock of seeing a dead body lessened, but not the morbid sense of wanting to investigate and see all I could, not so much playing Joe Friday but helping ensure I wasn’t missing something obvious. I had to determine if it was suspicious in nature before I called the coroner or the detectives, normally, I didn’t call them both. Once I called the coroner only to quickly recant and call for paramedics. The guy only looked dead and was still alive; barely. I’d jumped to conclusions forgetting my lesson from my first dead body… But he smelled bad but not from rotting. No details here, but it was kind of funny at the time… cop humor. Just picture a guy in a bathtub full of putrid reddish brown water who had been in it for several days.
Okay, enough. Hope I can sleep tonight.